


Painted Outside the Lines

by Anonymous



Category: Hiveswap
Genre: Afterlife, Bittersweet, During Canon, Epic Friendship, Gen, Hiveswap: Friendsim
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-24
Updated: 2020-05-24
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:15:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23824432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: They go to heaven together - but what is there to believe about such a makeshift heaven?Something Karako never got to believe in life.
Relationships: Friendsim Player Character & Karako Pierot
Comments: 2
Kudos: 19
Collections: anonymous





	Painted Outside the Lines

**Author's Note:**

> Karako POV.
> 
> Written for a [clown-fest](https://clown-fest.tumblr.com) prompt: Favorite scene or line.

  
  
  
Someone dreamed.

You were one of the dreamers, and so was your friend. But this is a strange paradise: It was made to give you peace. Who could be out there that prays for peace?

Death had come and gone like it ought, with a battle in which your heart and body and soul were all rent a li'l bit, at least. That part was right. Clowning wasn't anything like this place, though ... with the calliope playing gently as Bronya would drop a beat for the wigglers, the rocking of the horses like a boat that you didn't have to steal a ride in, with all the lights glowing gently to show nothing at ambush in the shadow.

This place, you'd have said, was made ... kind of wrong.

But.

So were you.

Painted up wrong for sweeps before you learned how to do it right, the scrawniest secret your custodian-friends had kept so far, too curious by far to be hidden, unnamed, and safe as you were asked to be. That's who you've always been, wandering, a lost boy finding many stories that he kind of fit in alongside the louder voices, and yet...

You were always made to belong. Sorry and scrawny and all that - this place was still made to _belong to you_.

Belonging perfect enough that your own friend, alien unbeliever, can be your caste as good as Bronya and the others always were: That's what's here. This place creaks and groans for you, its paint is bright and outside the lines for you, every string and feather on its wings was put together for you.

Someone dreamed, and now you can smile. Your friend is smiling, too.

Maybe you open your eyes. Maybe you don't.

Maybe there's singing that no one hears who doesn't hear stars and their furnace fury, their notes roared and rare. Maybe time looks funny from here, making you think of what you've lived and what you've missed and will miss, what so many people will make fool's plans for and the kind of faces they're going to make when you tell them past/future/present secrets. Maybe it's warmth your friend brings you, even in death, as they slump against you, and maybe they always will, here and somewhere unclear. Maybe you'll make yourselves constellations, too.  
  
  
  



End file.
